As to the third factor—economic strength—the trouble is not primarily misconceived policies in Washington, though they do play a role. It is that the potential ‘peer-competitors’ in this arena have grown so very formidable. Indeed, the real origin of the redistribution of global power seems to me to lie in the world beyond the United States. America still has a giant’s strength, but a company of prospective giants has been emerging elsewhere in the world, primarily due to differential rates of demographic and economic change. Kevin Rudd, then Australia’s Shadow Foreign Minister, has pointed out that this is the biggest change in the global economic system since the original rise of the United States in the nineteenth century.

Most people will be familiar with this phenomenon as it relates to China. The size of its population, its rate of economic growth over the past three decades, and the fact that its political elite seems at present to be firmly in control and to be following rational (though by no means liberal) policies, have meant that its diplomatic as well as its economic clout have grown in leaps and bounds over the past few years.

The rise of India has been, until recently, less widely noted or acknowledged. The Indian Government reformed its policies 15 years after China, and its growth rate has been less spectacular: at the end of 2005, 7.5 per cent as against China’s long-term average of nearly 10 per cent. Both countries are expected to grow strongly over the foreseeable future, and India has some future advantages over China. Because of the ‘one child’ policy, China’s population structure is more like that of Western nations than that of the rest of Asia, while India’s population is younger and more conducive to rapid future economic growth. Moreover, India has a very large educated middle-class, which is English-speaking (a major advantage in the age of the Internet), and it has managed to maintain a respectable level of political democracy over the years since its sovereignty was restored. That eases its relations with the Western powers. Above all, unlike China, India has no intrinsic reason for strategic tension with the United States, Japan or Russia—an important factor which will be elaborated on later in this chapter.

The rise of China and India is not the whole story of the global redistribution of power, although it is the most dramatic aspect of that process. Several other sovereignties from what we used to call the ‘Third World’ have also been undergoing impressive growth, not only in population numbers but in economic strength. World population by mid-century will run, on present demographic projections to nine billion people, of whom India and China will together account for three billion. But the other major Asian powers will account together for another billion. So Australia’s approximately 25 million people are on track to have about 4000 million Asian neighbours. Most Asian countries are poor but with growing middle classes, and thus have an increasing demand for all kinds of goods and commodities, such as oil. Within those totals, Muslims may number about two billion. From elsewhere in the non-West, powers like Brazil and Mexico in Latin America, are assuming a new importance. Even Africa is beginning to present some candidates for future diplomatic and strategic clout, such as Nigeria and South Africa. A number of small powers, who happen to be in possession of oil-bearing real estate, in Latin America, Africa, Central Asia or the Persian Gulf, will also benefit by an increase in diplomatic clout in the looming age of ‘energy insecurity’.